


Straight Guys

by misura



Category: Welcome to Temptation - Jennifer Crusie
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-07-24
Updated: 2008-07-24
Packaged: 2018-01-25 05:44:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,556
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1634657
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/misura/pseuds/misura
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A prologue to a game of tug-of-war.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Straight Guys

**Author's Note:**

  * For [kateydid](https://archiveofourown.org/users/kateydid/gifts).



 

 

"You don't really love Sophie; you just want sex," Davy said.

 _How about: I really love sex, and I just want to have it with Sophie?_ Phin thought, but didn't say out loud. 

"And you can get sex from anyone," Davy went on. "It doesn't have to be Sophie."

 _Sure, I can_ get _it from anyone, but who says I_ want _to?_ Well, Davy, obviously. Who'd been married to Clea, so clearly he should know better than to basically say sex was just sex, no matter who you had it with.

Phin realized a bit belatedly that Davy seemed to have come a bit closer to him every time he looked up. Apparently, he was given a choice between backing up, or simply not looking anywhere else but at Davy. Phin felt he'd done nothing wrong, exactly (although he'd sure done some things that were - what was it again? _Exciting but not weird, different but not kinky, and depraved but not embarrassing._ Yeah. That sounded about right.) He'd be damned if he let himself be intimidated for having great sex, especially by someone who'd actually been involved enough with Clea to be dumped by her.

At some point in his life, Phin knew he'd have intimidated the hell out of anyone for a chance to have Clea dump him. _And a lot more than just intimidate them, too._

"It doesn't have to be Sophie," Davy repeated, seeming to have some slight trouble with his breathing.

Phin noticed that Davy was more than close enough now to punch him. _Too close._ In fact, if punching Phin was what Davy intended, he'd have to take few steps back. _What's he trying to pull? Get me to lose my temper? Why'd he come all the way to the bookstore just to get into a fight with me?_

Something was wrong with this whole scene, but Phin couldn't quite put his finger on what it was. _Everything._ Phin decided to put good sense before male pride and took a step back, only to find himself with his heels against the counter. _Great._

Then again, according to what he'd heard from Wes, 'right where you could see him' seemed to be the safest place you could have Davy Dempsey. _As opposed to 'behind your back', or 'nowhere in sight'._

Davy's lips curved upwards in something that Phin wouldn't call a smile. 

"You know," Davy said conversationally, "my sister isn't the only one with discovery fantasies."

*

Phin could have sworn nobody'd come into the bookstore while Davy had been showing him he knew how to do several things that were weird but exciting, kinky but different and slightly embarrassing (to Phin, that was) but fairly depraved. All in all, once the fog in his head had cleared a little, he'd decided to file the whole thing away as 'great sex with a person I never want to have sex with again' and leave it at that. If a few hours of head-banging sex had been part of Davy's masterplan to destroy Phin, Phin's reputation, Phin's non-existent relationship with Davy's sister or all three of those things, Phin could live with that. The political trade had a long, proud history of denying any and all sexual relationships.

Still ... _what is it with this family that makes me want to have sex with them?_ At least he hadn't yet been thinking about having sex with Amy. All the same, Phin resolved not to take any unnecessary risks. It wouldn't be fair to Wes, anyway - _sure, I'm better-looking than he is, and I'm the Mayor while he's just a cop, but he's a good friend._ As of yet, Amy hadn't given any indication that she was the slightest bit interested in having sex with Phin, but Phin figured that she was a Dempsey, and as such, his own opinions about her feelings regarding him were not to be relied on. Heck, maybe she'd only hooked up with Wes because he was Phin's best friend.

 _Great. I'm getting paranoid._ All the more reason to be glad the Dempseys would be out of Temptation and out of Phin's life for good before the end of next week. A pity for Wes - Phin would be willing to bet he hadn't even gotten to first base with Amy. _Not my problem_. And if Davy thought _he_ was, it would be Phin's pleasure to prove him wrong.

At five, he closed the store and called Wes.

"I thought I'd head over to the Whipple-farm, see if there's any more fuses that need replacing, or anything else they'd need some help with," Phin said.

"Is this about you having sex with Davy Dempsey in the middle of your bookstore this afternoon?" Wes asked. "Because if it is, I'd really rather not get involved."

*

"Has Davy ever said anything to you about being gay?" Amy asked, snatching a piece of carrot and popping it in her mouth. 

"No," Sophie said, eyes remaining fixed on the (very sharp) knife and the carrot. In the back of her head, she could practically _hear_ Brandon telling her she'd only insisted on cutting the vegetables for dinner herself instead of buying them cleaned and cut and ready to be cooked because she was dealing (or rather: not dealing) with some repressed annoyance-issues.

Brandon had told her that most of the time, she was a rational, sensible, well-thinking person. She didn't make bad decisions; she just got a little confused about what the right decision was sometimes. _Chop._ As a result, she didn't have any such things as anger-issues, because (again, according to Brandon) people like Sophie didn't get angry. _Chop._ They just got a little annoyed on occasion. _Chop. Chop. Chop._ Irrationally annoyed, of course.

"Please tell me you're not thinking of Davy right now," Amy said. "Mmm. They're right about vegetables tasting better when they're fresh from the country."

"I'm thinking about Brandon," Sophie said.

"Oh." Amy considered this for a few moments, then stole another piece of carrot. "That's all right then, I guess. You were going to dump him anyway."

"I did dump him, actually," Sophie said absently. "He told me I wasn't thinking rationally."

"And then he came over here to point out your flaws and weaknesses in person." Amy sniffed. "If I were you, I'd have dumped him years ago. Good thing Davy's here. Bet you he can convince Brandon you're serious about dumping him - or at least make him pack his bags and get out of here _pronto_."

"Oh, here you are." Rachel walked in, carrying a bunch of daisies. "You seem to be taking the news pretty well," she told Sophie. "I thought you'd, like, at least be looking a little pissed. I know _I_ would, if it were me."

"What news?" Sophie asked, at the same time Amy said: "I was working up to it."

"Slowly," Amy added. Sophie raised one eyebrow at her. "It's about Davy."

"And Phin," Rachel said.

"And Phin," Amy allowed. "But Davy's the one I'm worried about." Sophie raised her other eyebrow as well. "Apparently, he went to see Phin in the bookstore earlier today, and the two of them got kind of up, close and personal. According to the rumor, that is."

"They got into a fight?" Sophie wouldn't have expected it of either of them - Davy was too smart, being a Dempsey, and Phin was too ... well, not polite, exactly. Definitely not polite. Polite men didn't do half the things Phin did, and they certainly would never do them with a woman they'd barely known for a week.

" 'You thought he came here to fuck you,' ", Rachel said, and "Not exactly," said Amy.

"What?"

"It's a quote," Rachel said. "From that movie 'Up, Close and Personal', with Roger Redford and that girl whose hair they kept changing. That's your special thing, isn't it?"

 _Let me fit in with you guys._ Sophie could practically hear her thinking and sighed. Once they left Temptation, Sophie wouldn't have a job herself anymore, let alone any open position for a twenty-year-old who doubtlessly meant well. _And it's Robert. And he's the one who said it to her, so it's not really a quote, because you changed the personal pronouns, and that's kind of cheating._ Brandon would probably say Sophie was projecting her own feelings of inadequacy and uncertainty on Rachel. Amy was right; she should dump Brandon again, and keep on dumping him until he got the point. _My new hobby for the next - oh, say two years. Convincing my therapist-ex-boyfriend I'm not dumping him because I'm delusional or irrational, but because I simply don't want to date him anymore._

"It's a Dempsey-thing," Sophie said. _Phin quotes from books. Maybe Rachel could quote from pop-songs. Like Britney Spears._

"Davy really never said anything to you about maybe being gay?" Amy asked. "Because he never said anything to me, either, and I can't imagine him not telling us _anything_. I mean, he knows we wouldn't care, right?"

"Don't you?" Rachel said.

"Don't we?" Sophie echoed. _Except that no, I changed the personal pronoun, so I'm not really saying the same thing she is._ "Well, no, of course we don't," she answered her own question.

Rachel looked impressed. "Your boyfriend's seen making out with your brother by half the town and you don't even care? Wow. You're really cool." She sounded a little jealous.

"Davy did what?"

"Making out may be a bit of an understatement," Amy said.

"Am I coming at a bad moment?" Phin asked as he walked in and looked around the kitchen. "Wow. You cut your own carrots? You must really like to cook."

 _Yeah, I'm pretty amazing,_ Sophie thought. _Wow. I'm really cool, and wow, I really like to cook. What a great human being I am, and what a great life I must be having, for people to tell me things like that._

*

His mother was taking the whole thing about as well as Phin had expected. Better, in a way. _I bet that if I told her I wanted to marry Sophie right now, she'd be overjoyed._

" - I mean, are you _trying_ to get Stephen elected as Mayor?" Liz asked.

 _No, but I seem to be succeeding in getting more great sex during these past two weeks than I got during the past two years._ His mother probably hadn't had sex (great or not) since his father had died.

Phin suppressed the faint sense of guilt that thought brought on. His mother would be the first person to tell him he shouldn't waste any of his time feeling sorry for her.

"People in this town aren't going to stand for a Mayor who's sexually deviant," Liz said.

"The word is 'gay', mother, and there's nothing deviant about it." _And is the fact that that's the first thing you think of a sign that you're really accepting or really intolerant? Is the future Mayors of Temptation all being Tuckers the only thing you care about?_ "There's plenty of people who are openly gay nowadays." Not, alas, in Temptation. "It's nothing to be ashamed of."

"Jamie Barclay says the only people who disapprove of other people being gay are narrow-minded," Dillie put in. Phin hadn't noticed her coming in. Judging by the expression on her face, neither had his mother.

"I'm sure she does," Liz said. Phin foresaw Jamie Barclay's mother getting a visit from the venerable old ladies of Temptation soon. "Now, I'd like to talk to your father. Alone."

 _What about what_ I _want?_ Phin thought, as Dillie obediently left the room, if not before giving Phin an encouraging look. _Thanks, kid. I love you, too._

"This is because of that woman, isn't it?"

 _Who? Diane, or Sophie?_ "It was just - " _A moment of complete insanity._ But that wasn't completely true, was it? Phin knew he didn't exactly _regret_ what he'd done. _It wasn't just Davy; it was me, too._ He just wished he hadn't done it where one of the town-gossips had been able to see him. _And how hypocritical is that?_ Phin shook his head. "It happened. Deal with it." Liz opened her mouth, and Phin said: "Don't do anything." _Yeah, like that's going to work._

Then again, should he really be worried about his mother going after Davy Dempsey? Unlike Sophie, who definitely had a nice side, Davy seemed more than capable of taking care of himself. In fact, maybe _his mother_ was the one he should be worried about. _Not too much, though._

"I knew I should have taken better care of you," Liz said, voice overflowing with self-recrimination. "It's all my fault."

Phin closed his eyes, for a brief moment entertaining a fantasy of being somewhere else. Anywhere else, as long as his mother wasn't there.

*

"I'm not gay," Davy said.

"The accused pleads innocent," Amy told Sophie. "The prosecution looks skeptical."

"I'd tell you if I were," Davy said. "Trust me."

 _He wouldn't be saying that if he actually meant it,_ Sophie realized. _He's a Dempsey, after all. Which means it's at least partially true._

"Did you or did you not have sex with the Mayor?" Amy asked sternly.

"I did." Davy shrugged. "Doesn't make me gay."

"But _why_?" Sophie asked plaintively. _I was having great sex with that person! I was feeling exciting and sexy and even a little bit perverted._

"Great sex?" Davy suggested.

"You still think he's going to break my heart or humiliate me or do something else awful to me," Sophie said.

"Well, if he has sex with Davy in his bookstore, he's obviously not the right, 'faithful till death do us part'-kind of guy for you," Amy pointed out.

"Exactly," Davy said. "If he messes around on you now, who's to say he's not going to do it again in the future? Except that _that_ time, you might not know about it."

 _But we weren't even in a relationship!_ Sophie thought. _I was the one cheating - on Brandon, who still seems to think I'm just going through a confused phase in our relationship, instead of accepting the fact that we're over. It was just about the sex._ And to Phin, apparently, it hadn't been just about sex with Sophie, either. "Who said I wanted to get _married_ to him?" she asked out loud.

Amy and Davy gave her near-identical looks. "I didn't," Sophie said. "It was just about the sex."

"Good," Davy said.

"You shouldn't marry a gay guy, anyway, even if it's the Mayor," Amy agreed. " 'Nothing good can come of it.' "

 _All right, that's it,_ Sophie decided. _I'm going to marry Phineas Tucker even if I have to drag him every step to the altar. I'm a Dempsey, too, after all - I can make people do anything I want. Except when they're family._

"I got the idea from Clea's friend Leo, actually," Davy told Amy. "There's this movie he recently produced, called 'Straight Guys'."

"Titles are really Leo's strong suit, aren't they?" Sophie asked. _Maybe Rachel can help him with that. How hard can it be to come up with better titles than ' Coming Cleaner' and 'Hot Fleshy Thighs'?_

Davy grinned at her, apparently convinced that all was well again. _His mistake._ Although, really, it wasn't as if she had any devious plan to get even with Davy for doing this to her. _Not yet, anyway._

 


End file.
